Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
Doctoral Project Dissertation Guide
A Project Dissertation Guide for Doctoral Students
Pursuing the Degree Of
Doctor of Ministry or Doctor of Educational Ministry
By
Doctoral Studies Committee
Kansas City, Missouri
September, 2012 March, 2013
Copyright © 2013 by Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary All rights reserved
Contents
Introduction ...1
Chapter 1 The Project Phase ...3
Looking for Challenges, Needs, and Opportunities ………...3
Writing the Project Worksheet ………...4
Writing the Project Proposal (Chapters 1-4) ………... 6
Requesting Project Proposal Approval ………... 32
Implementing the Project ………... 32
2 Dissertation Phase ...33
Format of the Project Dissertation ………... 34
Writing Chapter 5: Implementation Report ………... 35
Writing Chapter 6: Project Implementation Analysis ……...38
Writing the Front and Back Matter ………...42
Defending the Dissertation ………...42
Submitting the Final Copy ………...44
Appendix A Project and Dissertation Steps ...45
B Project Worksheet ………...49
C Professional Doctorate Dissertation Standards ...56
D Professional Doctorate Oral Defense Standards ...58
E Project Overview ………...59
F Project Proposal Contents ………...60
G Project Dissertation Contents ...61
H Midwestern Graduates’ Evaluation Procedures………...63
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K Turabian Certification ...66 L Project Director Vita Outline ...67
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Introduction
Congratulations! You have now completed all required doctoral seminars but one. This part of the doctoral program is the one all doctoral students look forward to as well as fear. Hopefully, you have taken seminar projects and research papers as great
opportunities to learn how to do a project and write your dissertation. You may even have information you learned through your seminar projects that will be a stepping off point for your final project. Welcome to the final phase of your doctoral journey.
When you took the first seminar, the Colloquium, you received the handbook for your doctoral program. That handbook and this Doctoral Project Dissertation Guide will be your key tools for preparing, implementing, and writing during the Dissertation Phase. We intentionally put the basic information for the Project Phase in the handbook so that you would learn from the very beginning of the doctoral program what you would be doing at this time. Now you will find the rest of the information in this Doctoral Project Dissertation Guide for you to use in the Project and Dissertation Phases.
This Doctoral Project Dissertation Guide is literally your step by step guide as you prepare your report on your project. That’s right. Your dissertation is your report on your project. So your program handbook goes hand in hand with this guide. You will even find the steps you will follow for both the Project Phase and the Dissertation Phase in both the handbook and this guide (appendix A). The Handbook provides an introduction to the Project and Dissertations phases while this guide leads you through the step details for each phase.
Note that this guide is written in the format based on A Manual for Writers, 8th Edition by Kate Turabian. You have been using it as you prepared all of your seminar
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research papers. You will also be using a guide that identifies Midwestern Seminary’s special formatting based on Turabian. This guide is designed to be a model for you as you write your dissertation. From the title page to the bibliography, you will find Turabian’s formatting throughout this guide. When you have a question about how something should look, you most likely will find it illustrated somewhere in this guide. Did you just catch that? A single space follows each sentence.
With your copy of the handbook and this guide in hand, you are ready to begin the journey. We suggest you put both tools in a binder that will make it easy for you to use on your journey. Tabs might even save you more time! You will find that this guide is
basically two chapters with lots of appendices. Simple works!
Please know that your professors and your Dissertation Committee are praying for you as you make the journey. We have all made a similar journey so we know what you are going through. We are here to assist you. You are the leader of this project which means your committee will follow your lead. The program director and Dissertation Committee chair will give guidance in this process, but you must not treat either as if they were collaborators in the ministry project or a co-author of the project dissertation. Enjoy the ride now as Project Director!
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Chapter 1 The Project Phase
As seen in the schedule, the professional dissertation is done in two phases. First, the Project Phase involves five steps while the second phase, the Dissertation Phase, involves writing the dissertation, defending the dissertation, and submitting the final copy. The Project Phase is explained in this chapter with headings corresponding to the five steps outlined in the schedule—looking for the challenge, need or opportunity to address, writing the project worksheet, writing the project proposal, requesting project proposal approval, and implementing the project.
Looking for Challenges, Needs, and Opportunities
Once the Project Director has completed the seminars, he or she is ready to begin the project phase of the program. The first step is to find a biblically definable challenge, need, or opportunity within his or her ministry setting, i.e., one which a Christian
minister would naturally address, rather than some other kind of professional. A second step is to conduct considerable field research to substantiate the need. This research includes, but is not limited to, demographics, psychographics, surveys, interviews, historical research, and observation. A third step, the Project Director will propose a solution to the challenge, need, or opportunity that is contextual and original, if not radically so, lest the project fail to educate one’s colleagues. Therefore, one must pore over the literature (books, journals, professional publications and to a lesser degree, the Internet) in the ministry field, checking to see whether the intended study covers familiar ground. The sources one explores and researches should be reflected in both the proposal and project dissertation bibliography.
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The thought-process involved at this stage can be summarized with the following series of questions.
1. Do the scriptures implicitly or explicitly recognize the problem or opportunity that I see?
2. Based on what they have said or written, would other ministry professionals be concerned about this sort of problem or challenged by this opportunity?
3. What about the culture, context, and community that make this project unique? 4. Am I doing something different, thus allowing other ministry professionals to learn
from this project?
5. As a practical matter, is the project doable?
6. Do I have an appropriate ministry setting for this project?
7. Will those in my ministry setting cooperate with me in this project?
8. Can I measure the changes the project intends to bring about? In other words, will I be able to demonstrate that I have changed the workings of my ministry setting? These questions ought to receive favorable answers before one attempts to write the Project Worksheet.
Writing the Project Worksheet
To help the Project Director develop a viable project, the Project Worksheet (appendix B) is completed during the Dissertation Preparation seminar. This worksheet becomes the springboard for the Project Proposal. In this short document, one will
identify the challenge, need, or opportunity in one’s ministry setting, the biblical rationale for the proposed project, potential participants and supporters, and bibliographic
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project (see program handbook and appendix B), develop thesis and purpose statements set objectives and goals, identify likely measurement tools, and propose a clear, concise title for the project.
At the conclusion of the Dissertation Preparation seminar, the Project Director submits a completed two or three page project worksheet (including bibliography) to the seminar professor. On the basis of the project worksheet, the professor will either return it to the Project Director for revisions or submit it to the Doctoral Studies Committee who will assign a Dissertation Committee to the Project Director.
The Dissertation Committee will review the worksheet and recommend revisions if the thesis statement or other items are insufficiently clear to warrant that the Project Director proceed to develop and write the proposal. This step allows the Dissertation Committee to determine if the project concept is a viable project proposal. The following major questions must be answered successfully by the Dissertation Committee:
1. Does the project address a genuine ministry setting problem or need?
2. Does the Project Director have a clear-cut understanding of the context and of those who will be involved in the project?
3. Can the Project Director find a biblical basis and sources for addressing the problem? 4. Will the Project Director be able to demonstrate that the project resulted in the
intended changes?
5. And finally, will the project educate colleagues in ministry?
The responses to these questions will be used to determine how to proceed with the project concept. When the worksheet is finalized, the Dissertation Committee gives the Project Director permission to proceed to the project proposal step. The Dissertation
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Committee chairperson documents the committee approval through a letter or email to the Project Director with a cc to the Dissertation Committee second reader, and the Doctoral Studies Office to confirm the approval to proceed with preparing the Project Proposal. The Project Director will enter the candidacy phase of the doctoral program and may begin writing the Project Proposal.
Writing the Project Proposal (Chapters 1-4)
Only after the project worksheet is approved by the Dissertation Committee may the Project Director commence work on the Project Proposal, i.e., the final document that allows the Dissertation Committee to decide whether one is ready to implement the ministry project. The Project Proposal will include the first four chapters and
bibliography of what will become the final dissertation.
Although the chair and second reader will generally be members of the MBTS faculty or administration, occasionally the doctoral studies director or Doctoral Studies Committee will assign someone outside of MBTS whose unique qualifications can be counted on to give sound advice in the area of practical theology and/or specific aspects of the project. Although the chairman and second reader are available for advice and evaluation, they will not do any work for the Project Director. Be advised that the ultimate responsibility for communication with the committee lies with the Project
Director. Sometimes this communication takes perseverance and patience. All written and electronic communications must be sent to both committee members and to the Doctoral Studies Office. A record of all communications must be maintained by the Project Director.
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The project proposal is a major undertaking. All work submitted must follow Kate Turabian’s A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 8th Edition. Any work which consistently deviates from this style will be rejected. The proposal is essentially the first four chapters of the final dissertation. The length of the proposal will vary. Generally, 20-35 pages per chapter is required. Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4 are included in the project proposal. For a complete outline of the elements of the
proposal, see appendix F.
Writing Chapter 1: Ministry Setting
Chapter 1 sets the tone for the project. The purpose of chapter 1 is to show that the Project Director understands the ministry setting and has conducted sufficient research to identify the challenge, need, or opportunity one intends to engage through his or her project. Here, the Project Director substantiates the challenge, need, or opportunity through field research. Additionally, factors stemming from the type of project such as the culture, context, and community that might affect the project will be identified. Although not every project will require each element, the following are suggested
Chapter 1 subheadings: Describing the Ministry Setting, Demographics, Project Director Information, Ministry Community Information, Hypothetical Presupposition, and Thesis Statement.
NOTE: For the purpose of clarification, the project director may hire someone to assist him or her with gathering research data. However, all analysis of that data must be done by the project director. Furthermore, the dissertation must be written by the project director.
8 Describing the Ministry Setting
In this section, the Project Director offers basic information about one’s place of service and where, by implication, he or she plans to implement the project. The
description of the ministry setting needs to emphasize salient features, i.e., the ones which may have some impact on the project. For example, if the Project Director aims to
increase the number of fellowship gatherings at one’s church, the description needs to observe that the church has no fellowship hall or that it has a large one.
To gather this information, the Project Director will need to use reliable measurement tools. Measurement tools include questionnaires, surveys, personal interviews, group polls, etc., used by the Project Director to generate objective
information about the ministry setting. Several helpful guides in the area of measurement tools are available on-line and through the library. A starting place is the book, Studying Congregations, edited by Nancy Ammerman, Jackson Carroll, Carl Dudley, and William McKinney (Nashville: Abingdon, 1998. ISBN: 0687006511). Other resources include the following titles:
1. The Gallup Guide: Reality Check for 21st Century Churches, George Gallup Jr. and D. Michael Lindsay, (Loveland, CO: Group Publishing, 2004. ISBN: 0764423975). 2. Questionnaire Survey Research by Linda Suskie (Tallahassee: Association for
Institutional Research, 1992. ISBN: 1882393058).
Other measurement tools are identified in Appendix H and the Bibliography.
To examine the ministry setting, the Project Director should also read any archival documents e.g., minutes, publications, convention and association records, and letters that might shed light on the nature of the ministry setting. Finally, the Project Director might
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interview several members in the church or organization for the same end, especially former pastors, directors of missions, long-standing members, new members, and anyone who might have left under adverse circumstances. A similar interview process involving community leaders, residents and others dealing with similar ministry issues (i.e., other pastors or ministers) might be undertaken. The project need will determine who is questioned and what is asked. As a rule, it is better to gather and generate more data than one anticipates using. The ministry description includes the demographics, information about the Project Director, and information about the ministry community.
Demographics
If a project confronts the “color line” of the church—i.e., the problem of a membership that does not reflect the racial realities of his community—the description gives historical and up-to-date statistics regarding the racial make-up of both. When using demographic and psychographic tools, beware of the “fallacy of demographics.” A
medium sized, racially diverse community with several thousand African-Americans and Hispanics with eight Baptist churches and a combined Baptist resident membership of 1,100 could imply several congregations that reflect the diversity of the population or one, large, Anglo church and seven small Anglo churches and no multicultural or ethnic congregations. Just saying, “Midville has eight Baptist churches serving, by resident membership, just over 3 percent of the city’s population of 33,000 that includes 19,000 Anglos, 8,000 African-Americans and 5,000 Hispanics” is both inadequate and
misleading. The demographic information provided here needs to relate directly to the context of the project.
10 Project Director Information
The Project Director should also give pertinent information about oneself that might affect the implementation of the project. Does the Project Director have special training in the proposed area of activity? The information here relates strictly to the project. Full information about the Project Director will be located in the Vita at the end of the dissertation.
Ministry Community Information
Does anyone in the congregation or organization have such skills or training that the Project Director plans to employ? How cooperative does one expect those in the ministry setting to be? How was this level of cooperation determined? What financial resources exist in the ministry? Has the organization’s history been a stable one? What conflicts or successes in its past might affect how others in the organization view the Project Director’s project? Are they theologically informed people? Are they industrious? Do they know and understand the needs of the community? Are they culturally literate? These questions are just a few of the many that might be entertained as the need for the project is substantiated.
In addition, the answer to these questions and others need to be in the context of the project purpose. The guiding question in determining the type of information to include about the community needs to ask how the information relates to the context of the project. For example, if any of the above questions do not relate to the context of the project, do not include that information.
11 Hypothetical Presupposition
Having already sketched a general picture of the need earlier, the Project Director now must validate the specific challenge, need, or opportunity the Project Director plans to address through this ministry project. Here the Project Director interprets the field research data to answer the question, “What actions need to be taken to engage this challenge, need, or opportunity?” Suppose that the Project Director’s ministry setting presents a challenge, need, or opportunity in the area of lifestyle evangelism. The laymen are just not finding ways to spend time with lost people. In that case, this section might begin as follows which was taken from a dissertation:
If lifestyle evangelism ought to be happening in local churches—as chapter 2 of the project dissertation will show—then a study of First Baptist Church (FBC), Anytown, substantiates that this church falls short of the biblical ideal. While some members of FBC do participate in monthly door-to-door witnessing, they otherwise surround themselves almost entirely with other
believers. Seventy-four percent of the congregation believes relational evangelism is important. However, only seventeen percent of the members have a meaningful relationship with an unchurched person. Their relationships with lost people tend to be superficial, so that no opportunities for dialogue regarding spiritual matters ever surface naturally. When they do witness, members of FBC find themselves having to “force the issue,” against the grain of modern American culture. Furthermore, most members were unaware of the major cultural, religious and economic shifts that have occurred in Anytown in the past decade.
Notice how the introduction proceeds from “thesis” to “hypothetical” to “present reality”. The final section of this chapter, the thesis statement demonstrates how the field research conducted by the Project Director supports the need for the project.
Thesis Statement and Purpose Statement
The thesis statement summarizes the premise of the project. The thesis statement captures the proposition, theory, or hypothesis being addressed through the project. The purpose statement anticipates the difference the ministry project will make in the ministry
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setting. Thus, by its very nature, the purpose statement refers to the project’s anticipated ends and not the means used to reach those ends. The means of the ministry project will be identified in chapter 3 of the project dissertation, in which the Project Director outlines the plan. The wording of the thesis statement and purpose statement should be consistent throughout the proposal and project dissertation.
Suppose that the Project Director has detected a lack of intercessory prayer in the church. In that case, the thesis statement relates to the premise that intercessory prayer is missing from the church’s ministry strategies: The thesis for this project is found in the proposition that First Baptist Church does not include intercessory prayer as a significant ministry strategy. The outcome-based purpose statement corresponding to that need may say, “Selected members of FBC will significantly increase the amount of time that they now spend in intercessory prayer.” If one believes the ministry setting lacks a proper emphasis upon benevolence ministries, the outcome-based purpose statement may say, “The members of FBC will implement strategies to aid needy persons within its
community.” If the Project Director gives the church low marks in the area of conflict management, the Project Director might state the purpose as, “Selected members of FBC will adopt the biblical model of graduated and delegated church discipline.” The purpose statement addresses the basic questions of inquiry. In the sample above, who (selected members of FBC), what (implement strategies to aid), where (within its community), and why (needy persons are there) are all addressed. A concise purpose statement brings clarity to the project, and therefore, should be given significant thought and development.
In summary, chapter 1 is not the place to do exegesis or evaluate other attempts to solve the problem at hand; that comes later. This chapter concludes with the implied
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statement, “I think this is a challenge and here is why.” Substantiating the need is theological in nature and is the heart of chapter 2. Why one understands the problem and proposed solution as having a theological and biblical basis will be the question of chapter 2.
Writing Chapter 2: Biblical Rationale
In this second chapter, the Project Director must demonstrate that the project aims to deal with a ministerial challenge, need, or opportunity as opposed to some other kind. Thus, the Project Director must show the challenge or need is justified from a biblical standpoint. To illustrate this difference, consider the following two problems: (a) “Seventy percent of First Baptist Church members are not getting adequate fluoride protection,” and (b) “Seventy percent of First Baptist Church members never pray.” The first problem is real, to be sure; but it is not one for a minister. The second problem falls well inside the ministerial circle and is well suited for a ministry project. If the Project Director cannot demonstrate from scripture—whether by direct statement or
implication—that Christians should be concerned about this challenge, the Project
Director must address a different one. The Bible must state that some of us, at least, ought to be doing what the Project Director wants his or her own population to do.
Chapter 2 has three sections: Introduction, Biblical evidence, and Conclusion. The explanations of these three sections follow in detail.
Introduction
This section of chapter 2 must tell the reader where the Project Director is going with the Old and New Testament evidence. Consider the case of the prayerless church
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mentioned earlier. In that case, the opening lines of chapter 2 would have the following sort of content taken from a dissertation:
The Project Director’s ministry project intends to enhance the prayer life of First Baptist Church. Therefore, in this chapter, it shall be demonstrated (1) that having a substantial prayer life is a biblical priority and (2) the average prayer life of five minutes each week among members is insubstantial according to biblical standards.
Notice that this paragraph prepares the reader for an argument, not a discussion. The Project Director is trying to prove something, not just to collect and disseminate information. Would biblically informed people say with the Project Director, “Yes, you’ve called attention to a real challenge in our church; and you, as our pastor, should be specifically worried about it”? In chapter 2, the Project Director tries to show that they would in fact do so.
Biblical Evidence
All project dissertations get their rationale from a biblically derived imperative. Something that Christians ought to be doing, and the people in the Project Director’s ministry setting are not doing that thing—or they are not doing it as well as they could. It really is that simple. Chapter 2 must get to the place where the Project Director says something like the following example:
In chapter 1, the Project Director implied that the failure of FBC to do X is a ministry challenge. In the Biblical Rationale in chapter 2 the scriptures not only invite believers to do X, but positively require people to do it. Therefore, the Project Director concludes that the project will address a genuine ministry challenge for FBC.
No substitute exists for an argument of this kind. The Project Director cannot justify the ministry project simply by finding examples in scripture of the behavior that
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one wants one’s own people to adopt. All texts used in this chapter must command people of the church or organization to do, even if they do so only implicitly.
The basic skill of this chapter is to notice when the biblical writers are merely saying, “This happened,” and when they are saying, “This ought to happen at all times and in all places.” Take the Decalogue as an example. Both Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 contain moral commands that God would now expect His people to follow, even if the form of our obedience might differ from what the ancient Israelites did. The same conclusion follows regarding the Sermon on the Mount. But what about the case of Jacob’s wrestling with the angel? Has Moses included this episode in his works for the sake of encouraging us to wrestle with angels? What about the mentoring of Joshua by Moses? Of course, it happened. No one doubts that. But does this historical report oblige us to go around mentoring people? Could we, on the basis of this text, call non-mentoring churches moral failures? Are they displeasing to God?
Regarding the New Testament, similar questions arise. Does a “Go and do thou likewise” attach to everything that Jesus happens to have done? Perhaps not. Of course, in almost every case, we can safely argue, “If Jesus did X, it’s OK for us to do X.”
Justifying sinners would be an obvious exception here. But the conclusion, “We could do X if we like,” differs categorically from, “We had better be doing X,” and only the latter justifies a ministry project. Mere permission to do this or that is not enough. Likewise, if Paul does something, it is a safe bet that one may follow his example. But the Project Director needs more than this rationale to support the project. The Project Director needs to catch Paul stating or implying that one must copy his behavior. This confusion sinks more second chapters than any other. One might call it the “tunic fallacy.” To wit: “We
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know that Jesus wore a tunic, so we must increase the tunic-wearing in our congregations.”
Sometimes one discovers that the Bible really does not urge readers to do what the project assumes that they must do. The Project Director might be tempted to play “translation tango.” Here the Project Director attempts to make the Bible say this or that by switching uncritically from one version of it to another, e.g., from the NAS to the KJV. Consider the Project Director who wants the church to ‘cast a vision’ regarding missions. The Project Director searches Strong’s Concordance for the word “vision” and finds it, among other places, in Proverbs 29:18. But there is a problem: the Revised Standard Version, which the Project Director has been using thus far, says something else, “Where there is no prophecy the people cast off restraint . . . .” So the Project Director turns to the New American Standard Version and finds, “Where there is no vision, the people are unrestrained.” That is better: now we have the word vision in the text. But the Project Director has always thought that the lack of vision could be a matter of life and death, especially to a church. So the Project Director keeps going. He or she gets out his or her grandfather’s King James Version, and there it is: “Where there is no vision, the people perish . . . .” The text now says what the Project Director wants it to say; and so the Project Director runs with it, making no attempt to argue that ‘vision’ and ‘the people perish’ are the best translations of the original Hebrew. But that, of course, is not exegesis, and it is not doctoral level work.
Two other errors need to be mentioned together. Dissertation Committees often receive second chapters featuring rampant quotations. Sometimes the Project Director puts three blocks on the same page, each one having fifty words or more. Combined with
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this first mistake is the tendency to quote authors uncritically. The Project Director’s style amounts to, “He says, she says,” with no evaluative remarks attaching them to his own dissertation. Does the Project Director agree with them? Does the Project Director
disagree somewhat? Why are they being quoted at all? One can lay it down as a rule that persistent quotation of this kind results from half-baked thought. So avoid it at all costs. The Project Director may use substantive footnotes to demonstrate knowledge of textual debates, thereby avoiding the “He says, she says” problem.2
Do quote as needed, but always ask, “Can I paraphrase what he says?” and “Do I really need to include this quote?”
Doctoral research must have higher standards than bachelors and masters level work. This principle applies to the arguments given in chapter 2 of the project
dissertation. Consider, for example, the question of secondary literature. Many Project Directors settle on a project under the influence of a celebrated practitioner like John McArthur or Henry Blackaby. Popular practitioner/authors give the impression that they know what the Project Director is going through and can identify ministerial problems that he or she might never have thought to look for in the ministry setting. In the ideal case, such practitioners would build their efforts based on top-flight biblical scholarship. They would seek the advice of those who write commentaries based on the original languages of scripture. They would also rely on systematic theologians like Wayne Grudem and Millard Erickson. Therefore, the Project Director’s expert witnesses in chapter 2 should not be practitioners. They should be the biblical scholars and
2. A substantive footnote allows one to include brief quotations or notations that add credence to his or her statements or opinions. They may also be used to provide evidence of contrary views or opinions outside the focus of the body of the paper.
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theologians. The Project Director will explore the relevant contributions of the practitioners in chapter 3.
To give an example of this difference, consider the Project Director who plans to use a text from the Acts of the Apostles. One might argue a correct reading based on the testimony of various church-growth gurus, but if one does, one’s examiners (Dissertation Committee) will be curious. Why does the Project Director not tell us what authors such as F. F. Bruce, I. H. Marshall, J. R. W. Stott, and Eckhard Schnable think about this text? If one is studying the Gospel of John, one’s examiners will be looking for support from authors like D. A. Carson, Rudolf Schackenburg, C. K. Barrett, Leon Morris, and Herman Ridderbos; and if the examiners do not find it, the same doubts will arise. Does the Project Director want to ignore the actual words of the text, or is the Project Director just not ready for doctoral level work? These are dreadful questions for the examiners to be asking, and the Project Director can avoid them by staying with the experts.
Devotional commentaries and Sunday School literature do not belong here.
A few more hints may also be helpful in this regard. The Project Director must always remember that one is trying to construct an argument that the examiners can easily follow. Therefore, one must learn to ‘flag’ the logical transitions of chapter 2 with appropriate English words. Too many Project Directors merely string declarative
statements together without showing how they relate to one another. As an example, consider the following paragraph:
Gilbert Bilzekian wrote that kephalē means “source” in Ephesians 5:23. He did not think that God wants husbands to have the leadership role in marriages. Wayne Grudem pointed out that kephalē rarely means “source.” Its most common meaning is “head,” which may then be used metaphorically to mean “leader.” In Ephesians 5:23, the best translation of “head,” is as a metaphor for “leader.”
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The general problem with this passage is that it lacks connective tissue. The Project Director has given us no words like ‘but’ and ‘therefore’ to show us where the Project Director is going here. But notice how simple this paragraph becomes once changes have been made to bring out its logical structure:
Gilbert Bilzekian argued that kephalē means “source” in Ephesians 5:23; and thus, he did not think that God wants husbands to have the leadership role in marriages. However, Wayne Grudem responded by pointing out that kephalē rarely means “source” in ancient Greek literature. Rather, its most common meaning is “head,” which may then be used metaphorically to mean “leader.” Accordingly, the best translation of kephalē in v. 23 is probably “head,” so that it becomes a metaphor for “leader.”
Obviously, Bilzekian and Grudem were adversaries on the question of what kephalē means in Ephesians 5:23 and they have “locked horns” in print. Grudem rested his case on a word-study. Finally, by adding the word ‘accordingly’ in the last sentence, the Project Director has told his or her readers to brace themselves for the Project Director’s own conclusion. The Project Director plans to take sides here, siding with Grudem. Notice, how appropriate transitions can simplify an argument and make it more convincing.
Another tip for arguing effectively is to follow the oldest version of Murphy’s Law, which stated, “If you want a task to be done correctly, you must make doing it the wrong way impossible.” This principle is called “idiot-proofing” in other contexts, and it applies well to the case of writing arguments. If the Project Director intends to be
understood—which is the first step toward convincing anyone—the Project Director must make misunderstandings impossible. Each sentence and paragraph should be
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grammar, and style would shut down this process straightaway, of course, but even correct English can be awkward and vague.
At the macro-level, the key to writing clear arguments is visual structure. Some Project Directors plow straight through chapter 2 without using any headings and subheadings to bring the reader up for air, which is an obvious liability. As a rule, never write a paragraph that cannot be easily read while holding one’s breath; and use headings and subheadings to provide oxygen and a sense of direction. To check the clarity of his or her work, the Project Director should ask a non-specialist to read it—someone who knows nothing at all about his subject matter.3 If that person can follow the argument, anyone can.
Conclusion
In this part of chapter 2, the Project Director should restate the overall objective and claim to have reached it. On the subject of enhanced prayer life, for example, the Project Director would say something like the following:
The Project Director’s project assumes that all Christians must have a constant and fully-developed prayer life; and so he has sought here to justify this mandate exegetically. Evidence from both the Old and New Testaments has been considered here; and having reflected upon it theologically, the Project Director is now able to say with confidence that the Project Director’s assumption is
defensible. A prayerless church is a defective church. Here is a challenge that must be engaged by the church family.
Some statement of this kind will do. The main point to remember is that both the
introduction and conclusion should indicate plainly where chapter 2 is going exegetically.
3. The Project Director is highly encouraged to enlist several persons to proofread one’s work prior to submitting it for examination. This proofreading by other persons will assist in the identification of spelling errors, poorly worded arguments, form, and style issues.
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Writing Chapter 3: Research and Discovery
In chapter 1 of the project dissertation, the Project Director describes his or her ministry setting with special emphasis on the challenge, need, or opportunity that his project will engage. In chapter 2, one develops an exegetical basis for one’s judgment that one has a genuine ministerial challenge, need, or opportunity. Now in chapter 3, the Project Director must provide readers a history of the church or ministry where the project will take place in regard to the challenge, need, or opportunity.
Chapter 3 also surveys previous efforts to engage the same kind of situation in other ministerial settings and types of ministries through a review of literature, all with a view to showing that the Project Director’s ministry project will edify the Project
Director’s colleagues. This chapter introduces the readers to what others have done in other places and situations and what has taken place in the past in the project’s setting related to the challenge, need, or opportunity being addressed by the project.
Consequently, chapter 3 of the project dissertation has three sections, the history of this project’s setting, the review of literature, and the contextual application related to this project.
History of Practice
The history of the church or ministry in the context of the challenge, need, or opportunity being addressed by the project plays an important role in setting the stage for the reader to understand what is behind the situation. The project director needs to
carefully consider what needs to be included to set that stage. The reader most likely does not need to know the entire history of the church. The reader only needs to know aspects of the ministry’s history that directly relate to the context of the project.
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If a project is focused on one church, consider including historical information that backs up the purpose of the project. In most situations that means a history of the buildings of the church will not be included here. Nor will the names of all the pastors. If the project relates to the evangelism mindset of the church, the history provided here only relates to the evangelism efforts in that church through the years.
All other types of projects that relate to specific ministries not limited to one church will focus on the history of the specific ministries. For example, if the project is focused on enhancing the skill of preaching in some way, the history will focus on the project director’s preaching experiences and possibly the overall history of preaching that relates to the project director’s preaching needs.
Consequently, the history captured in this section needs to strictly focus on the context of the project’s challenge, needs, and/or opportunity. By doing so, the project director will help the reader understand the background of the project.
Review of Literature
Few Project Directors will have seen a new kind of challenge, need, or
opportunity in their churches or ministries—i.e., one not noticed by any other ministry professional. The tendency, rather, is to engage what everyone else engages. But where ministers differ, sometimes a great deal, is in terms of their response and solutions. Some try one thing, some another thing. Ideally, the whole Christian community will learn from the triumphs and failures of these attempts. Of course, few practitioners wind up
analyzing their efforts in print; but some have, and the Project Director must try to learn what can be learned from this literature. Now is the time to reflect upon the contribution
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of practitioners such as John Maxwell, Chuck Swindoll, John McArthur, Allan Taylor, and Kenneth Gangel.
This Project Doctoral Project Dissertation Guide concludes with a list of
resources, both on-line and in print, which are standard in the field of practical theology and research. The Project Director should make good use of these and other resources. But no one can read everything. In fact, one struggles just to access all of the information, let alone evaluate it. So how much is enough? The short answer is “representation.” The Project Director’s responsibility is not to secure and assimilate every single article and project that relates to the topic chosen. Rather, the Project Director should concentrate on getting an overall view of what has been done by others thus far regarding the perceived challenge, starting with all available literature that is parallel to the Project Director’s own plans. After all, the distinguishing mark of a professional doctorate is the ability to find new and better ways of engaging challenges, needs, and opportunities. To
accomplish strategic problem solving techniques, one must know what others have attempted.
Clearly, this review of literature should not have a mere, “Warren did X, and Gangel did Y,” structure. The Project Director must evaluate each effort in terms of its success, failure, and biblical fidelity, although it is permissible to comment on several of them as a class, i.e., Warren, Hybel, and Silva. If one reaches no clear conclusions about this literature, one’s examiners will wonder why the project is needed. If other ways have succeeded, why not adopt them? This question is at the heart of every ministry project.
24 Contextual Application
For clarity, the history and the review of literature in chapter 3 applies only to the context of the project. The purpose of the research and discovery regarding the history and review of literature is to engage the reader in the challenge, need, and opportunity facing the project director. Therefore, chapter 3 needs to stay within the context of the project without exception.
Writing Chapter 4: Implementation Strategy
After the literature on the subject matter at hand has been examined, the Project Director tells the readers how the Project Director intends to deal with the challenge, need, or opportunity identified back in chapter 1. Now the Project Director is ready to design a ministry plan and describe it in writing. Here the Dissertation Committee learns what the Project Director is going to do and how he or she is going to do it. The Project Director also explains how he or she plans to measure the results one achieves, though measurement devices will appear in the appendix of the dissertation. Thus, the Project Director restates Thesis Statement and then adds the Professional Goals and Project Goals, Logistical Annotation, Resources, Assumptions, Limitations, and Key Definitions.
Thesis and Purpose Statements
The thesis and purpose statements, as they appear here, will be identical to the statements given in chapter 1. No changes are necessary or desirable. Here is a place to cut and paste without remainder.
25 Project Objectives and Goals
Once the Project Director gets the thesis statement in line, the Project Director is ready to describe the objectives and goals of the ministry project. These would be bridges that the Project Director must cross on the way to accomplishing the Project Director’s overall purpose. As an illustration, the objective of reaching St. Louis by car from Kansas City in five hours might entail the following goals: (1) To successfully rent a car at Enterprise Car Rental. (2) To stop for lunch and use the bathroom in Columbia. (3) To maintain an average speed of 60 MPH.
Of course, the number of such tasks could, in principle, be endless; and therefore, the objective and goal template found on each Project Type Worksheet is intended to keep the Project Director on track in terms of which objectives and goals should be mentioned. Following the guide is not optional: the Project Director’s objectives and goals must conform to the pattern of objectives and goals on the Project Type Worksheets so that all ministry projects undertaken at Midwestern Seminary play by the same
methodological rules.
Logistical Annotation
All projects seek to accomplish the same thing in the abstract: they try to get people in a ministry setting to do what everyone else of their type (e.g., fathers, mothers, singles, adults, leaders, etc.) should be doing or they attempt to get the Project Director to improve or do something different with his or her skill set. But how does the Project Director plan to modify the group’s behavior or that of his or her own? Obviously one would have to teach and lead practically with a group, as the ministry project is not an exercise in coercion. For those projects that focus on the Project Director’s skill set, the
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same practical context is true. Consequently, the Logistical Annotation section explains the planning and implementation of the project through the following four areas: research of appropriate methodologies related to what the Project Director will be doing (i.e., teaching methods, preaching styles), group description (if a group is involved in the project), the experience i.e., lesson plans, sermon outlines, or agenda; and logistics of the sessions (i.e.. training, teaching, preaching).
Research of appropriate methodologies
The first area of the plan is to identify methods to be used in the projects. Of course, brand new methods are not the only place where novelty or originality might arise. The tendency among some Project Directors is to exaggerate the stringency of the ministry project’s “novelty” and “originality” requirements. The Dissertation Committee does not require the Project Director to discover brand new methods. Rather, the Project Director’s work can educate one’s colleagues by modifying existing methods,even if only slightly. Or one can attempt to apply existing methods to a qualitatively different population, showing that what works with Group A also works with Group B. Novelty might also arise when the same methods are used by a qualitatively different kind of ministry. In the above scenarios, the project might even obtain a negative result: thus the Project Director and his peers learn from something that had promising prospects yet turns out to be a failure (i.e., what works with Group A does not work with Group B). The basic lesson here is that novelty and originality may be fairly close at hand. The Project Director just needs to ask the right questions.
Two final principles regarding methods ought to be mentioned here. First, the Project Director must recognize that methods are not theologically neutral. Some
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methods should never be used by a minister of the gospel—e.g., increasing church
attendance through cash giveaways. Others are merely acceptable in that the scriptures do not forbid their use. Some methods are obligatory: we have no choice but to use them. Accordingly, here is a point at which the proposed plan might come under scrutiny. Are the Project Director’s methods forbidden, permissible, or obligatory? Evaluate the plan carefully with this sort of question in mind.
Secondly, the proposed plan must be designed to yield measurable or demonstrable results. One cannot aim to change intangible states of affairs, such as whether a congregation is deepening their communion with God. Rather, the project must concentrate on personal and/or institutional behavior, plus changes in what people know and believe when appropriate. Someone can document whether John knows X and Mary does Y. However, no help is available for the Project Director who wants to know how often the two of them receive guidance from the Holy Spirit. The same remark applies to states like the fervency of prayer, the peace of God and the joy of our salvation. These are realities, to be sure, but no one can generate data on them.
Group description (if a group is involved)
The second area of the plan describes the Project Director’s selected group, the people on whom the ministry experiment will be conducted. This area includes each person’s name (or pseudonym), age, marital status, and occupation, plus anything else that might be relevant to the ministry project. For some projects, it matters what ethnicity the member claims. In other cases, the socioeconomic status might have some bearing on the project. Obviously, the kind of information given will vary from case to case, but the
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dissertation should do some biographical sketching, including the Project Director himself or herself.
The experience
The third area of the Logistical Annotation section outlines what the participants will do. For example, when using the Enhancing a Ministry Skill type of project, the lesson plans for each training session, describe in broad detail what each session involves. A few sessions may use a lecture format, while others feature significant hands-on
experience. Either way, however, the dissertation must tell the reader what the Project Director will do concretely and why anyone should expect these steps to have their intended result. Remember, at this stage, the project must be substantial enough to require at least three months to implement. What will the Project Director say and do? Who, if anyone, will be working with the Project Director? What handouts or visual displays will be used? If the project involves sessions, how long will each session last? Why does the Project Director think these plans will realize the stated objectives? The Project Director will notice that the proposal should contain much information that would be useful here, since the participants will also need to know what the Project Director is doing and why. However, the Project Director should only refer to the project materials in this section: the materials themselves will appear as appendices to the dissertation.
Logistics of the sessions (if appropriate to the type of project)
The fourth area of the Logistical Annotation section must settle the logistics of the project experience. When does the Project Director intend to meet with the group or carryout certain project steps? The Project Director should answer this question with
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precise dates and times. Furthermore, the Project Director must inform the reader of the place where the sessions or steps will occur and why that particular place was chosen. This detail may seem trivial, but it is not: locations vary in terms of their appropriateness for this task. For example, for the Equipping Strategy type of project, no one would believe that serious study and training will occur at McDonald’s or Denny’s. Even conference rooms vary in terms of their fitness for this task. In all cases, then, the facilities chosen should be conducive to learning or whatever the purpose of the project.
This guide often reminds the Project Director that the project should concentrate on changing individual or group behavior, perhaps in concert with changing either one’s thoughts, attitudes, feelings, etc. After all, the ministry project involves applied theology, and the Project Director needs to get measurable or demonstrable results. At the end of the project, the Project Director would like to say, “Before my project, my people/I were /was doing X; but now—as all can see—they/I are/am doing Y, and Y is better.” But no one else will be able to see this difference or learn from this project unless reliable measurement tools have been used. Think of the latter as ‘before’ and ‘after’ photographs.
Measurement devices
Therefore, the importance of this section, Logistical Annotation, including the careful reflection needed to write it, cannot be overestimated. Project Directors need to get this part right. Fortunately, excellent measuring devices have already been created in most cases. One needs only to modify them slightly for one’s special needs.
With the Equipping Strategy type of project, the Project Director will usually find it best simply to apply the same tests twice, once before (pretest) and once afterward
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(posttest) so that the same information is measured each time. One must supplement one’s pre- and post-tests with other measurement devices, and here is where troubles can arise. The usual supplement will be less formal questionnaires and the like, and the Project Director’s use of them can go awry in at least two ways. First, one can use a test whose adequacy has not been established. No one has tried to see whether it produces similar results with similar inputs (= reliability), and no one has established that it measures what it says it measures (= validity). Of course, the Project Director would not be expected to achieve perfection in this area: the Project Director has neither the time nor the expertise to do so. However, one ought to keep in mind that these considerations can affect how others perceive one’s results and even whether they see results at all.
For all types of ministry projects, a variety of devices might be used to measure the results of the project. These devices include interview, control groups, expert
observers, and learning contracts. Appendix H and the bibliography in this guide should prove helpful to Project Directors.
Resources
In this section, the Project Director needs to show that he or she has counted the cost of doing the proposed project. These ‘costs’ include, but are not limited to, the use of copyrighted materials, rented facilities, professional consultants, post office charges, printing of materials and travel expenses. All costs associated with project
implementation need to be anticipated in this section, and reported in the project dissertation. Therefore, the time to do the math is before the project begins.
31 Assumptions
All ministry projects will have to work from starting points that cannot themselves be defended in any practical way. They are the Project Director’s assumptions, and the Project Director must identify the decisive ones expressly in this section of the project dissertation. Consider the objectives described earlier with this question in mind: what ‘breaks’ does the Project Director need for the project to be successful? For example, when doing an Equipping project, one assumption is that the Project Director can actually teach one’s participants what they need to know, i.e., that the Project Director is a
competent pedagogue. Likewise, one assumes and hopes that one’s participants will hold up their end of the project bargain. They must cooperate with the Project Director on some level, or the project will certainly fail.
One can also imagine a case in which a measurement tool does not hit its mark. Instead of quantifying one thing, it quantifies another. A test which would measure a person’s Bible knowledge might actually be an exercise in speed-reading. One might define success in terms of whether the selected members produced this or that document only to discover that they are semi-literate. They understand what needs to be done, but do not know how to commit their thoughts to paper. Therefore, the Project Director should include as one of the project’s assumptions a statement to the effect, “The Project Director assumes that the measurement tools will measure what they purport to measure.” Likewise, since there is no help but God for human nature, one ought to say, “The Project Director assumes that the selected members will answer the evaluation tools honestly.”
32 Limitations
In this section, the Project Director draws several lines around the project, especially in terms of its population, use of time, area of study, number of trainers, and capabilities of its participants. These are the project’s limitations, and they should appear as a list according to the following format:
1. This project is limited to the selected members of FBC.
2. This project is limited to the umpteen weeks from __/__/__ to __/__/__. 3. This project is limited to the topic of ___________.
4. This project is limited to ______ instructor(s) on the topic of ____________. 5. This project is limited to the physical and mental abilities of the selected members. The setting of limitations is, therefore, a relatively straightforward matter.
Requesting Project Proposal Approval
The Project Proposal must be submitted to the Dissertation Committee members and the Doctoral Studies Office (one copy each) ten months or more prior to one’s anticipated graduation. This ten-month schedule allows the highly motivated Project Director adequate time for project implementation, writing the dissertation, and revisions, as needed. To ensure that the Dissertation Committee has adequate time to review the proposal, the Project Director must not implement his or her ministry project within sixty days following submission of the proposal. Please note that no project that is started—let alone completed—before the Dissertation Committee approval will count toward the degree requirements.
Only the Dissertation Committee chair can give approval to begin project implementation. The committee may request that revisions or changes be made to the
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proposal, or that additional research be reflected in your writing. Therefore, keep in mind that one should not presume immediate approval. Once the Project Proposal is approved, a letter or email to that effect will be sent from the Dissertation Committee chair to the Project Director, with a copy sent to the Doctoral Studies Office and the director of doctoral studies. The Project Director is encouraged to keep good notes and possibly a journal during project implementation to assist with the writing chapters 5 and 6 of the dissertation once implementation is complete.
Implementing the Project
Implementation of the project begins as soon as possible after the Dissertation Committee has approved the proposal. The project must be so substantial that it requires no less than three months to implement in which the Project Director works directly with those in his or her ministry community. Unexpected delays may result in the ministry project implementation taking longer than anticipated. Starting the project soon after approval enhances the possibility of completing the dissertation during the suggested implementation schedule (appendix J).
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Chapter 2 Dissertation Phase
After project implementation and the results are gathered, the Project Director is ready to complete Chapter 5, Implementation Report and Chapter 6, Implementation Analysis. At this time, the Project Director may make only minor revisions to the first four chapters, and those revisions will require approval of the Dissertation Committee chair. No changes should be made to the project goals and objectives. Most likely the Project Director will uncover relevant information regarding the history or ministry setting during the implementation. These new findings or insights should be included in substantive notes or in chapters 5 and 6 rather than revising the body of the first four chapters.
Format of the Project Dissertation
All written work submitted must employ standard English and Turabian 8th edition format, subject to any qualifications added by the Doctoral Studies Office or Dissertation Committee. The Project Director is encouraged to secure the services of a qualified proofreader who will check the work for conformity to the current edition of Kate Turabian’s A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 8th Edition prior to the initial submission to the Dissertation Committee. The Dissertation Committee will not consider any dissertation which consistently falls short of Turabian standards. Prior to submission for binding, every dissertation must first be certified by a proofreader that it complies with Turabian’s 8th Edition (appendix K).
The body of the dissertation must fall within certain limits, the absolute minimum being one hundred pages in double-spaced, Times New Roman size 12 font, Turabian
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format. The body excludes the back matter (appendices, glossary, and bibliography). Shorter dissertation bodies will be considered only upon committee approval. As for the maximum length, no formal limit has been set, though the Project Director should recognize the demerits of verbosity. In many cases, lengthy dissertation results from one’s inability to choose rationally what to include and exclude. Therefore, one must take special care to avoid “padding” the dissertation with extraneous commentary.
Special Note to DMin Dissertations: Acceptable Greek fonts, all of which are True Type fonts, are: Greek Regular, Greek FP, Graeca II, Graeca II Bold, Graeca II Bold Italic, and Graeca II Italic. Acceptable Hebrew Fonts, all of which are True Type fonts, are: Hebraica, Hebraica II, and Hebraica Regular. Most dissertations will not require the use of Greek or Hebrew fonts, as a transliteration of the text generally will suffice. Direct questions regarding the use of Greek and Hebrew to the committee chairperson.
Chapters 1-4 comprise the Project Proposal. Chapters 5-6 present the project report, evaluation, and analysis.
Writing Chapter 5: Implementation Report
During project implementation, the Project Director will be expected to keep notes, a journal, and other records of what happened. Upon the completion of the project implementation phase the Project Director is ready to begin writing the final chapters of the dissertation. The first of these is the implementation report.
The project implementation report tells the reader what happened as the Project Director implemented the project and what its final results were, all without saying yet whether they were good or bad. Fortunately, if one starts with a sound project proposal and good measurement tools, this part of the dissertation will present few difficulties. The
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Project Director posed answerable questions and got definite answers back. Since the Project Director will have created softer data as well, the structure of this chapter needs careful planning.
The ideal presentation will start with a report of what the Project Director actually did procedurally (implementation summary). Then it will cover the data generated by the Project Director’s measurement devices, moving from the hardest data to the softest— i.e., from the black-and-white pieces to the gray ones (results of direct and indirect measurement tools). Finally, one should refer to any causes and results that one did not expect (unforeseen causes and effects). Consequently, chapter 5 has four major sections that need further explanation—implementation summary, results of direct measurement tools, results of indirect measurement tools, unforeseen causes, and unforeseen effects.
Implementation Summary
In this section, the Project Director explains what was done to achieve the intended results in each aspect of the project. Did the Project Director proceed as planned? Did the Project Director use the plans found in the dissertation appendices? Did the experiences occur when and where they were scheduled to take place? Did everyone show up as planned? These are the sort of questions that ought to be addressed in the Implementation Summary, with the emphasis on brevity and orderliness.
Results of Direct Measurement
This section presents the data generated by the Project Director’s measurement devices, proceeding from the most objective to the least. So then, consider how the results of the following kinds of tools might be described:
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1. Standard Tests: The first matter to settle here is what happened when standard tests
were given the second time. Thus, the Project Director would start by citing the previous ‘scores’ and then give us the latest ones, plus summaries of where the differences are. The Project Director should move through the tests question by question, keeping the answers as brief as possible.
2. Interviews: If the Project Director’s evaluation featured interviews of various kinds, then the before-and-after results of them should be given here, coordinating the responses from person to person and question to question. One wants to see what everyone says about question A, before and after, then what everyone says about B, before and after, and so on. The key here is to make straight-line comparisons easy for the reader to make.
Results of Indirect Measurements
The Project Director might have several measurement tools which would generate data, and these results should be presented tool by tool. Were control groups utilized in addition to the group worked with directly? Did expert observers look for changes of the kind that were intended? Were individual learning contracts involved? What institutional changes may have occurred in the course of the project?
If the Project Director has included measurement devices to look for such changes, then they should be written about her. All without saying whether the changes are for the better or worse, expected or unexpected.
38 Unforeseen Causes
In this section, the Project Director describes any unanticipated causes that broke in on the project, whether they were good or bad (although one will not takes sides on this latter point until the last chapter of one’s dissertation). For example, for the Equipping projects, was someone in the study group especially cooperative or
uncooperative? Was a question used that the participants seemed not to understand? Did facilities become unavailable at some point, or was the condition of them other than expected? Did the Project Director spend more or less money than was anticipated? Were the assessment tools appropriate? These are the sort of questions that this section would cover.
Unforeseen Effects
In this section, the Project Director refers to any results of the project that were not anticipated beforehand. Perhaps the project created strategic friendships between people who had, up until then, hardly known each other. Perhaps the study group discovered needs that the church did not notice before. Serendipity is a large part of the learning process, so that a project dissertation ought to have a place where this kind of information emerges. At all times, one must discipline oneself so that evaluative
commentary does not intrude. Adverbs like ‘fortunately,’ ‘sadly,’ ‘regrettably,’ ‘luckily,’ etc., do not belong here. Chapter 5 does not tell the reader, even indirectly, what to think about any of the data that it reports.
Writing Chapter 6: Project Implementation Analysis
Now the time for accolades, wonder, and lamentation has come. Did the Project Director achieve what the Project Director set out to achieve? If not, why not? In this
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section, the Project Director will now size up the whole project, using its goals and data as guides for reflection.
The order of analysis in this section corresponds to the order of the proposal and project plan as seen in the order of chapters 1-4. This chapter must address each part of the project with a view to rendering a final verdict on the thesis and purpose statements. Did the project (and Project Director) arrive or not? The readers will have learned how the Project Director would answer this question, once one has judged one’s success in carrying out each part of the project and meeting the project goals and objectives.
General Evaluation
This evaluation provides an overview of project and the project results in light of the project proposal. How well the project was prepared? How effective was the project implemented? How much change was brought about in the ministry setting as a result of the project? These are the largest questions that one’s dissertation will confront, and they demand evaluation, with the stress on self-examination. Of course, the Project Director must not concentrate on shortcomings only. The reader must also learn of the project’s successes, but one must be as tough on oneself as the data demands and be encouraged by this thought: even projects which turn out badly can edify the church, provided that they had every promise of succeeding beforehand. When a strategy seems like it should work and then does not, one wonders why.
Ministry Setting Evaluation
Here, the Project Director evaluates the effectiveness of the description of the need, problem, and/or challenge in the ministry setting found in chapter 1. Did the Project
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Director identify a real challenge, need, and/or challenge that needed to be addressed? Did the Project Director establish a legitimate need, challenge, and/or opportunity? How did the hypothetical presupposition serve as the basis for the project? These and other questions will guide an evaluation of the information one provided in chapter 1 on the culture, context, and community related to the project.
Biblical Rationale Analysis
The evaluation of the Biblical Rationale in chapter 2 considers the exegetical basis for the Project Director’s decision that he or she has a genuine ministerial challenge. Does the biblical rationale fully explain the project rationale as a biblically derived imperative? How does the biblical interpretation meet hermeneutics standards? Can the Project Director justify the project biblically? These and other questions will assist the Project Director in analyzing how his or her biblical rationale connected with the ministry project.
Research and Discovery Evaluation
Evaluation of the history, review of literature, and contextual application recorded in chapter 3 gives the Project Director the opportunity to draw conclusions about the role this information played in the results of the project. How does the history of the ministry impact the results of this project? Did the Project Director discover some aspect of the ministry that was not found in the literature? Can the project content be done in other contexts or situations? This evaluation will help the reader connect the project results with the information captured in chapter 3.
